Known systems have been designed and sold that allow a person who may need emergency services to contact a remote facility by activating a wearable pendant. Two main versions of such systems currently exist. In the first known system, the pendant remotely activates a base station that is equipped with a speaker phone. In a system where a customer is paying for a remote monitoring service, the base station automatically dials the phone number of the remote monitoring service using the public switched telephone network (PSTN) which is a circuit-switched network. The customer's voice received by the speakerphone can inform the remote monitoring service of what the problem is. However, if the customer is not close enough to the speakerphone for his/her voice to be heard, then the remote monitoring service cannot be informed of the nature of the problem.
A second type of emergency system, as shown in FIG. 1, includes a base station, like the first system, but the pendants include a speakerphone that can carry voice signals to the base station where they are then transmitted over a PSTN line to the remote monitoring station.
Both systems further include the ability for the pendant to identify itself to the base station and for the base station to transmit that information to the monitoring service. In this way, the remote monitoring service can know who is requesting emergency help. Such systems may also be able to send emergency requests from sensors in the home (e.g., smoke detectors) such that the remote monitoring system can be alerted to other possible emergency situations.